Bobby Bumps (1916-1919)

Earl Hurd produced the Bobby Bumps cartoons at Bray from 1916 to 1919. This was not Hurd's first use of the mischievous little boy. Prior to Hurd's tenure at Bray, he had featured the Bobby-like "Brick Bodkins" in an early 1910s comic strip; Hurd subsequently starred the character, now renamed Bobby Bumps, in two 1915 cartoons for Universal's "Joker" label. Hurd's exact business relationship to Bray remains something of a mystery, though it's well known that the two collaborated to form the Bray-Hurd Patents Company, enforcing their ownership of the cel process of animation. Hurd's personal relationship with J. R. Bray, including their initial meeting, is somewhat mysterious, too, from today's vantage point. There is little documentation describing their relationship, and J. R. had little to say about Hurd when historians interviewed him. It seems possible that Hurd and Bray had a falling out, though their mutually beneficial cel process patents remained jointly lucrative; both creators profited on them for more than a decade after Hurd left Bray in 1919. Other animation studios, including Van Beuren and Walt Disney Productions, paid Bray-Hurd to license the cel process as late as 1932, when the patent expired. After leaving Bray, Hurd went on to produce Bobby Bumps cartoons first for Paramount, then for Educational Film Exchange, finally retiring the character in 1925. Hurd worked with Walt Disney later in the 1930s, with design on SNOW WHITE and storyboard work on Mickey Mouse's famous THE POINTER (1939) being among his accomplishments. Hurd passed away in 1940. As a character, Bobby Bumps was a rascally middle-class kid like many in comics of the time. Very much the Bart Simpson of his day, Bobby enjoys creatively causing trouble, often with the help of his grumpy dog Fido and his black friend Choc'late. Authority figures in the series are Bobby's pompous dad, his snooty mom, and their tough family maid Goldie, a stereotypical mammy character never seen without her handkerchief headband. Some later Bobby cartoons invoked the Fleischer "hand of the artist" scenario with a hand-drawn Bobby fighting back against his cartoonist, though the conceit was only occasionally used.

Comic Adaptation of BOBBY BUMPS AND THE STORK (1916)

Bobby Bumps Filmography (49)

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